Elements
An HTML document is really a tree of HTML elements which denote various semantic pieces of the document.
Element Structure
An HTML element begins with a start tag and may also have an end tag, content and attributes. [Tags][html/tags-and-attributes] are surrounded with angle brackets: <tag>.
One of the simplest elements is the br element which denotes a line break. This element consists of only a single tag and has no closing tag, content or attributes. It is written as follows:
1 | <br /> |
A more typical element is the p element which denotes a paragraph. It consists of an open tag (<p>), a closing tag (</p>) and content:
1 | <p>Here is the content.</p> |
As we said earlier, elements may have some associated attributes. One of the most common cases where an attribute is used is the a element. Let’s have a look at an a element with an href attribute and value:
1 | <a href="http://pguides.net">home page</a> |
The above element has the attribute href which has the value http://pguides.net.
More information about attributes can be found in the [tags and attributes chapter][html/tags-and-attributes].
Most HTML elements may contain other HTML elements part of their content.
1 2 3 4 5 | <html> <body> <p>This is my first paragraph</p> </body> </html> |
- The
bodyelement is a child of thehtmlelement - The
pelement is a child of thebodyelement